Mariska Hargitay has opened up about her complex emotional reaction and ultimately the trauma she endured for years after she was raped by a friend in her 30s.
“I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t believe that it happened. That it could happen. So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative. I now have so much empathy for the part of me that made that choice because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive,” the Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star said in an emotional essay in People magazine on Wednesday.
Like many rape victims, Hargitay knew her attacker. “He was a friend, Then he wasn’t. I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no,” she recalled.
To avoid physical violence, Hargitay said she froze, rather than fight back, a decision that caused her years of questioning. “I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent. I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body,” she continued in the essay.
In 2004, Hargitay founded the Joyful Heart Foundation, becoming a powerful advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. But in her own mind, she had little success in erasing the memory of her own sexual assault.
Years later, as Hargitay is about to turn 60, she wants to move beyond the assurance and courage her TV character, Captain Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit drama, has given others to working for greater accountability.
“Survivors who’ve watched the show have told me I’ve helped them and given them strength. But they’re the ones who’ve been a source of strength for me,” she wrote. And Hargitay seeks legal reform to tackle the crimes of rape and other sexual violence.
“I want this violence to end. Sexual violence persists not because of something unchangeable in our human condition, it exists because power structures are in place that allow it to happen. Those power structures are so pervasive that no one is immune from them,” she stated.
As for her attacker, Hargitay wants to put guilt where it belongs, with her attacker.
“For me, I want an acknowledgment and an apology. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I raped you. I am without excuse. That is a beginning. I don’t know what is on the other side of it, and it won’t undo what happened, but I know it plays a role in how I will work through this,” the People essay states.
After a reckoning following years of shame, suffering and isolation, Hargitay feels a sense of renewal in her life. “I’m renewed and I’m flooded with compassion for all of us who have suffered,” she concluded. “And I’m still proudly in process.”
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